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During the summer of 2016 I relocated from Seattle to Las Vegas. Since then, I have not put up new posts here on New To Seattle, although visitors are free to comment on older posts, to which I often respond. In Sin City I've launched a new blog, New To Las Vegas, which continues my same tradition of observation, musings and commentary. Visitors can access my new blog by clicking here. Please visit and stay awhile.

Stressful Seattle: HOW CAN THAT BE??!!

A new study out this week calls the Seattle metropolitan area one of the most stressful places in the country. Worse than New York. Worse than Chicago. Hell, even worst than Cleveland and Newark, N.J.

The list was compiled by Sperling’s, a Portland, Ore. research firm that cranks out various “best places” lists. But the outfit occasionally takes a walk on the dark side. The Seattle-Bellevue-Everett metro area came out No. 9 among the 50 largest metros, which collectively have about half the country’s population. (In case you wonder, the most stressful was Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater while the least stressful was Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington).

This study can’t be dismissed by suggesting a bunch of people simply got together in a room and voted on worst places on the basis of personal experience like a bad meal in a restaurant. Sperling’s used government statistics drawn from a variety of studies to fashion its rankings.

There were a number of factors. And when you look at that list, you start to understand why Seattle was near the top. In fact, it’s stuff that I hear my fellow Seattleites kvetch about all the time.

Factors included unemployment, suicide rate, alcohol consumption, length of average commute, crime rates and “cloudy days annually” (229, the worst showing of any area on the list). There also a category called “mental health,” which drew on a federal Centers for Disease Control study that somehow calculated “days per month with poor mental health.” Another factor (I’m quoting here) was “number days in month without enough rest or sleep.” Yawn.

Seattle’s ranking was so unexpected that lead researcher Bert Sperling (he presumably owns the business) made a point of it in the press release announcing the study.

“The real surprise here is Seattle,” says Sperling. “It isn’t a city we normally think of as stressful, but the divorces, suicides and alcohol use are near the 80th percentile for our study, commuting is painful, and crime is surprisingly high.”

Now, including Seattle, I’ve lived in six of the 50 areas, and I have a pretty good familiarity with maybe 20 others. That’s more than half the list. Coffee consumption aside, the Seattle area does not strike me on a day-to-day basis as any hotbed of hyper-jittery folks with rising blood pressure, although they certainly obsess about the weather.